Oceanography | Vol.24, No.3114 OCEAN WARMING OF NARES STRAIT
changed from a hostile, sluggish, steady, ice-covered environment with little global impact to an ocean that has become increasingly accessible, apparently rapidly changing, only partly ice-covered, and connected to the global meridional overturning circulation. Our new observations demonstrate that...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.690.2808 http://muenchow.cms.udel.edu/papers/Nares2011Warming.pdf |
| Summary: | changed from a hostile, sluggish, steady, ice-covered environment with little global impact to an ocean that has become increasingly accessible, apparently rapidly changing, only partly ice-covered, and connected to the global meridional overturning circulation. Our new observations demonstrate that waters o! Northwest Greenland constitute the "nal limb in the grand cyclonic circulation of the Atlantic layer in the Arctic Ocean. #ese waters with an Atlantic water mass signature are warming in Nares Strait to the west of Greenland as they are elsewhere. Estimates of the magnitude and uncertainty of this warming are emerging from both moored observations and historical hydrographic station data. Ocean temperatures sensed by instruments moored 3 m above the bottom between 228 and 366 m depth in Nares Strait suggest a mean warming of about 0.023 ± 0.015°C per year for the 2003–2009 period at 95 % con"dence. Salinity changes for the same period are not signi"cantly di!erent from zero. Nevertheless, oscillating bottom temperatures covary with salinities. Mean bottom salinities in Nares Strait exceed 34.56 psu while no water with salinities above 34.51 psu occurs |
|---|